It begins with Lance’s father, Ray, who left school as a teenager to become a carpenter. However, Ray loved boats more than houses and, in the mid-1950s, became a boatbuilder for the late Bob Wild in Hamilton.
Ray went out in 1960, building his first commission in the basement of his Hamilton house, a Hartley hull with decks and cabin of his own design. As his business grew, Ray shifted to another home and workshop in Tamahere, just outside Hamilton, where he spent the next 36 years building timber boats.
“He built so many timber trailer boats and launches, I don’t know how he did it,” recalls Lance, the second of Ray and Thelma’s four sons, the others being Warren, Miles, and Andrew.
Lance was born 1958 and started his…